5 Mistakes To Avoid While Building A Rapport With Your Sales Leads
The sales department for any agency is like the backbone of the organization since everything gets generated and closed by that team. Salespeople are known to go above and beyond to get the deals closed and sometimes, it’s not that good.
Things change, people change. Selling to the customers who are getting smarter day by day makes the job a little tricky. Surviving in a constantly evolving environment is challenging and to keep up with that, salespeople should know their way around it.
Once we start the real conversation with potential clients/leads, we should showcase our skills in a way that it doesn’t sound too salesy. Things get messy when we talk about ourselves or hammer them to make a purchase.
So, slow down to speed up, as they say, and get the ball rolling!
Here Are The 5 Common Mistakes That Are The Biggest Turn-offs While Building A Rapport With Our Potential Customers
1. Rushing Things
Oftentimes we see sales professionals rush in to get the deals closed. Sometimes, they follow targets so blindly that they don’t realize, they were supposed to solve the problem and not sell the products/services.
We all know some star performers in the sales department. Their keen focus is to give a proper amount of attention and time to the potential buyers that they can use their sanity to make the decision while also making sure that they don’t go away. This is one of the most basic ways to keep the sales subtle and yet effective.
2. Trying To Do The Hard Sell
Studying the background of the leads and then assuming their needs help you better when you try to pitch them rather than going all-in and pitch your services to every lead. There are multiple ways to find out what your leads are into nowadays and what are their areas of interest.
In this time, year and day, salespeople need to be very dynamic and it’s a universal truth just like the sun sets in the west! There will always be multiple things thrown at them but they should learn their way to sound like a real problem-solver and not salesy. Gone are the days when hard sales used to work. Consumers have become smarter now so they would always have time and resources to double-check your words, facts, and figures before deciding to associate themselves with you and your company.
3. Saying ‘YES’ To Everything
Most of the time we see people saying yes or giving their nod to almost everything. It’s a human trait, everybody needs validation, everyone tries to fit in but businesses run on transparency and honesty. Of course, diplomacy has its own advantages but as a smart salesperson, you know when to use what to get the deal closed, that too through the right way.
When leads ask questions that may range from general to technical, salespeople should know the real answers to them as well as the presentable answers too! Sometimes our technical team lacks experience in a specific task so we must not say that we have hands-on experience in dealing with such tasks but there is no harm in saying that our team is capable enough to research it and likely to learn their way around it as well. For anyone, remaining adaptive is a quality so establishing a positive impression of our agency on the consumers’ minds tends to be interestingly challenging.
4. Quoting Extravagant Prices
In the era of the Internet, as we know privacy is a myth. It’s a child’s play to know your competitor’s rate for both, you as a salesperson and them as a customer. So keep your rates real. Quoting way too high and then offering discounts would only lead them to value you and your services less.
Salespeople are the face of the company to potential buyers so while they know what their teams are capable of delivering and the amount of time they put in, they also know what kinds of consumer mindsets are out there to deal with. So it’s a sure shot balancing act, don’t quote higher to justify the work your team put in because it would leave the consumer to go to another agency and you get no deal. Also, don’t slash the pricing too much that your team loses motivation and clients undervalue your efforts.
5. Drifting The Conversations Unprofessionally
Most of us are socially active people and over a period of time, the meaning of it has changed and became that we all are active on social media platforms.
Just to get more insights about our potential buyers, we often check out their profiles on social media where they might have posted about their life events. So sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, just to find some common grounds in conversation with those leads, we bring up about their relationships or friendships or anything that’s way too personal.
One thing that we all need to remember is there is a fine line between personal and professional space. Some people might like it but most wouldn’t because while cracking a deal, people might not like to deal with a tornado of thoughts about their personal lives.
According to Salesforce, 85% of prospects and customers are dissatisfied with their on-the-phone experience.
So sticking to the professional way to get the work done and improvise based on the variety of customers we cater to is the only way forward to bring down the above number!
Signing Off
There are literally numerous mistakes that salespeople make throughout their whole career and only introspection and retrospection can make them better. Starting from prospecting to cold-calling, drafting emails to follow-ups, there are multiple instances where it is witnessed sales ninjas get agitated.
Sometimes sales professionals don’t complete the full follow-up cycle, sometimes they get too desperate on the phone with potential customers and sometimes they respond to the genuine buyers after a long time and they lose the game.
If knowledge is the currency of the 21st century, dealing dynamically with everyone in their own ways is the most rewarding skill. Take your time, learn, understand the mindsets of people, and look at the pattern of behavior of the customers. Understanding the psychology of your buyers will help you go a long way!
We at ZealousWeb take pride in knowing the in and out of the sales process and our client retention ratio can prove that too! Let’s get your queries answered over a virtual coffee meeting!
Originally published at https://www.zealousweb.com.
